This is perhaps a silly question, Jscott991, but do the AI nations you have observed have the requisite naval inventions?
If they do not, that is a problem in itself, but it might help to narrow down the causes of the non-building in your games.
It is certainly not because of the 0's in the ai files. Those entries do NOT indicate an absolute percentage, but rather a relative force level the AI should attempt to maintain amongst those of the types of forces being examined.
In the case of the English AI file (and most others), it means that the AI tries to maintain a 0/0/0/2/10 ratio of dreadnoughts/battleships/ironclads/monitors/manowars
Why no values for dreadnoughts, battleships, and ironclads? The answer is obvious when you consider the following: by the time you get battleship tech (#288), ironclads, monitors, manowars, (and frigates) have all been deactivated, and you can only build battleships. The preference values are added for ship types that obsolete each other, so you can be sure that if the AI
wants to build a ship-of-the-line, it will build a battleship. Likewise, since dreadnought tech disables battleship tech, the same is the case when dreadnoughts are discovered, making sure that dreadnoughts are built.
E.g. in the English ai file, when you reach battleship tech, battleships will have weight 12, whatever escort ship is available at your current tech will have weight 10 (inherited from Frigate), and the steamer transport will have weight 13 (inherited from clipper transport)
Code:
[font=courier new][color=white]
# NAVY:
submarine = 0
# --------- 0 # Submarines
dreadnought = 0
battleship = 0
ironclad = 0
monitor = 2
manowar = 10
# --------- 12 # Ships-of-the-Line
heavy_cruiser = 0
cruiser = 0
commerce_raider = 0
frigate = 10
# ---------- 10 # Escort/Fast ships
steamer_transport = 0
clipper_transport = 13
# ---------- 13 # Transports
# 35
[/color][/font]
Thus the ai not building battleships in your games is very unlikely to be because of that ai parameter (since the way it is currently designed means that 0 is quite often the correct value. If the value for a high order ship is greater than 0, it is because you want to skew production away from some other BRANCH, for instance by building more ships-of-the-line relatively to fast escorts at high tech), and it may prove more interesting to see if it is because of a lack of tech or resources, and, if it is neither of those, then it may be an AI lack of interest in disbanding old ships and building new ones. I know that code to handle that situation exists, but it might not be doing its job in your situation, in which case Johan would likely want a save.
Still and all, please do a quick check that the nations you are examining
do have the prerequisite techs and resources, please
